Pay-Per-Click (PPC) for Small Businesses

The quickest way to generate sales and leads online is to do pay-per-click (PPC). Unlike SEO which can take months to see results, when you do PPC you can be #1 on page one of Google immediately for any keyword you want! PPC is also easier to track your results and usually provides a better return on your investment than SEO.

PPC, or pay-per-click, is a form of paid advertising. You are paying for your ad to be displayed on Google or Bing. You are charged every time a person clicks on your ad, or “per click.” For example, let’s say you pay $5 per click and your ad gets clicked on five times, you’ll pay $25.

The advantage to PPC is you can get your business instant visibility online. Within hours of starting a PPC campaign, you can have visitors to your website! Another advantage of PPC is that the information you get from a PPC campaign can be very useful for SEO. For example, you can see exactly what keywords people search for in your area and then you can target those keywords in your SEO campaign. Another argument for PPC is that unlike SEO, you have 100% control of our campaign. As long as you’re willing to pay, you can be ranked #1 for any keyword for as long as you want.

The disadvantage of PPC is that it only works for as long as you’re doing it. Unlike SEO where once you get your rankings you can “coast” for a while, you don’t have that luxury with PPC. You have to continuously pay to keep your ad displayed. As soon as you stop, your ad disappears and so does all the traffic to your website. The other disadvantage to PPC is that the click through rates for ads aren’t as good as the click through rates for organic results because people tend to ignore paid ads. Finally, PPC can be very expensive in some competitive niches and markets.

SEO and PPC is not an either/or decision. They can actually work great together. Because SEO can take time, you can do PPC to kick start your online presence. And as I mentioned in a previous answer, you can use the PPC data to determine what keywords to target for your SEO campaign. It’s also impossible to rank for every keyword doing SEO so you can supplement your SEO efforts with PPC by targeting those keywords that you’re not ranking for organically.

Unless you are trained how to do PPC properly, or have had a professional set up a campaign for you, I can guarantee you that you are wasting money. In every case where a small business owners comes to me that is already doing their own PPC, they are wasting money. If you’re doing your own PPC I will immediately be able to help you reduce your costs. I will also be able to help you get more clicks and a better return on your investment!

Usually not. The only time there is a set up fee is if your campaign requires more work than a typical small business PPC campaign. In most cases a set up fee isn’t required but if I need to charge one it varies between $150 – $250. I will let you know before I begin working on your PPC if there is going to be a set up fee and what it will be so there are no surprises!

The monthly management fee is $299. That covers my time to monitor and optimize your campaign on a weekly basis. I provide weekly updates for you as well.

In addition to the monthly management fee is the money you spend on ads. This is called your monthly ad budget. You decide how much you want to spend but I recommend you spend a minimum of $500/month. If you spend less than that you won’t get enough clicks (and leads) to justify the management fee. Most of my clients are spending between $1,000 – $2,000/month on ads.

Let’s say you’re going to spend $1,000 on ads. Your monthly fees would be $1,299 ($1,000 for ads and $299 for the monthly management fee).

I’ll work with you no matter what your budget is but as I mentioned before, I recommend you spend at least $500/month on ads if you’re going to pay someone else to manage your PPC for you. You can spend as little or as much as you want, however. You’ll be charged the same monthly management fee ($299) no matter what you spend as long as your monthly ad budget doesn’t exceed $3,000.

In most cases I focus strictly on Google. The majority traffic to small business websites comes from Google due to Google’s dominance in the search market. In fact most small businesses get 80-90% of their search traffic from Google. It only makes sense to focus our efforts there.

I will only expand your PPC efforts to Bing after we already have a well-optimized and profitable campaign on Google (and you choose to increase your budget to expand to Bing). The majority of my clients, however, choose to focus strictly on Google.

I never set up and manage my clients’ campaigns under my AdWords account! If you don’t already have an AdWords account, I will help you set one up. Your campaigns will always be set up and managed in your account.

No. When I set up your campaign in your AdWords account, you’ll be required to supply your credit card information to Google. You’ll be charged automatically by Google for your ad spend. You’ll only pay me directly for the monthly management fee. I will send you an invoice every month for my fee.

Once I complete your free ppc evaluation you’ll get 20 minutes of video from me delivered in 4 five-minute videos. There won’t be anything for you to download either. I’ll send you links to your videos and all you’ll have to do is click on them to watch.

There is no obligation or strings attached to these free evaluations. These evaluations simply give me an opportunity to learn more about your business and demonstrate my expertise. If you choose to hire someone to help you with your PPC, I hope you choose me but if you don’t, no biggie. Either way you’ll get some great insights on your PPC!

If you’re not doing ppc my free evaluation can still benefit you as I’ll create a personal video for you where I’ll walk you through the keywords and markets you may want to target if you decide to do ppc. I’ll also show you how much you can expect to pay per click given those keywords and markets.